by JAKE NUTTING
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After nearly thirty years of playing and coaching almost exclusively in his home county of Scotland, Robbie Neilson needed a reset.
That isn’t to say Neilson hadn’t built a resume full of impressive achievements. As a three-time winner of the Scottish Championship as a coach, there was no shortage of opportunities for Neilson when he departed Heart of Midlothian FC in April of last year.
“When you get a call from a club for a job, I think it’s so important that you have some excitement about it,” says Neilson. “There were a couple of offers when I came out of Hearts, but they didn’t really excite me all that much. I just felt there’s no point in taking a job if you’re not excited on day one. It’s not going to end well. I was quite happy waiting for the right opportunity to come.”
While he waited for the right fit, Neilson dabbled in media work and coaching on the academy side of things. He also decided to broaden his horizons with a trip to the United States, taking a mini tour along the East Coast to get a first-hand look at what the U.S. had to offer a coach in search of a new challenge.
“I think sometimes you get caught up in the same stuff, the same games, the same teams, the same people you’re talking to,” he says of his career in Scotland and the UK. “So I was looking to get out of my comfort zone a wee bit. I wanted to come over and have the American experience. I thought I’d come over and have a face-to-face chat with people who have been here for years to see what the leagues are like. When I came over, I was really surprised by how good everything was. The setup of teams, the professionalism of teams, the quality of players, it all seemed really enticing for me.”
Neilson’s American sojourn was enough to convince him that a move across the Atlantic Ocean could be exactly what he needed for the next act of his career. It just so happened that realization came at the same moment the Rowdies were seeking a new coach to take reigns. A club with name recognition back in the UK, a club with a recent track record of success on the field, and a club where fellow Scotsman Neill Collins had found the resources and support to grow as a young coach. It seemed like just the right move.
Something that truly stuck out for Neilson when investigating the Rowdies was the investment the club had shown in creating a top-tier environment for both players and the technical staff to train and work at the club’s training facility in Tampa.
“In my opinion, the most important thing is you have to have a good training facility,” says Neilson. “A lot of teams back in the UK, some don’t even have their own training facility, some have facilities that aren’t even really adequate to train. You need a good stadium, a good fanbase, good players, and good people as well. The Rowdies ticked all those boxes for me. Coming over and seeing the training facility and all those things and meeting everyone really made the decision for me.”
Neilson was also looking for an opportunity that would allow him to be a guiding hand for the club outside of the first team, and the Rowdies were ready to move in that direction. In Neilson’s first year, the Rowdies have signed more local players to USL Academy contracts than ever before. One of those players, forward Cristian Ortiz, became the first-ever USL Academy signee to ink a professional contract with the Rowdies in May. That same month, the Rowdies also made the move to acquire 17-year-old U.S. Youth International Nate Worth via transfer.
With Neilson at the helm, the Rowdies have sent a clear signal that they have ambitions to be a destination for young players to come and develop their game.
“When I spoke to leadership about coming here, a lot of the conversation was about trying to develop the club as well,” notes Neilson. “That was a big part of me coming. A lot of the time in the UK you’re just a head coach. You look after the first team and that’s all that you do. You don’t really get involved in the background because they’ve already got a head of the academy, a head of philosophy, directors of all the different odds and ends. Coming here, you get to actually build something as a club. We want to build our youth system. There are some big local academies doing good work. We’d like to find a way to create connections where we take on some of their best players, help develop them, and then hopefully get them into the first team. The idea of being a part of that project was really appealing to me.”
In order to fulfill those long-term development ambitions, though, Neilson knows the team still needs to deliver results on the field. Through the first five months of the season, they’ve done just that as they are on track to make a run for the USL Championship’s Players’ Shield and secure a playoff spot for the sixth straight season.
For Rowdies Assistant Coach Stuart Dobson, who has seen his fair share of head coaches during his ten seasons in Tampa Bay, Neilson has seamlessly found a way to build upon the culture that was already in place while leaving his own imprint on the squad.
“There’s always that uncertainty as an assistant coach when you’re waiting for a new head coach to come in,” says Dobson. “You wonder what their style of coaching, their attitude, their philosophy will be. Robbie’s come in from coaching at a very high level and with that, he’s kept the Rowdies tradition of success going. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed working with him and learning from him. He’s helped me develop as a coach as well. Having someone new with fresh ideas, the team has really responded to him. You can really tell in training sessions that the players are enjoying the new standards that he’s set.”
A career in coaching was not always front of mind for Neilson during his playing days. Born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Neilson spent the early days of his youth career in the academy system of Scottish giants Rangers FC before joining Hearts at 16 years old. That same year, he began gaining coaching experience and steadily earned his coaching licenses as an education requirement in Scotland.
Over the years, his passion for coaching grew. By the time he was in his mid-twenties, a post-playing coaching career became a priority. In his final year as a player, Neilson passed up a chance to continue playing at the top level in order to take a dual player-coach role with lower division club East Fife FC.
“I wanted to get real, hands-on experience from the coaching side of it,” Neilson says of that decision late in his playing career. “I needed that experience to prepare me for being a first-team head coach. I’d planned that coaching move for a long time in my mind.”
Neilson couldn’t have planned for his coaching journey to eventually take him to Tampa Bay with the Rowdies. Looking back on the move now, though, the 44-year-old sees his stateside move as the necessary jolt to kick off the next decade of his coaching career.
“It’s been different, and that’s exactly what I wanted,” he says. “I wanted something to challenge me. Almost every day there’s something different here. You’re dealing with different cultures in the dressing room, which is great. The style of the game is different here as well. You’re playing against East Coast teams and it’s mostly European styles, but then you play against a West Coast team and it’s a totally different style of game. It’s exciting to see some variety. The whole experience has been different, which is exactly what I needed.”
